


Sweet Dreams

by Isis



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Pre-Book 1: Six of Crows, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25426213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: Nina Zenik settles into her new life in Ketterdam.
Relationships: Inej Ghafa/Nina Zenik
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Juletide 2020





	Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



> Thanks to Morbane and A. for beta!

“Sweet dreams,” said Nina, as she closed the door behind the last of her evening clients, a mercher’s daughter who crept out of her father’s mansion a few times a week to have Nina work her skills on her. Her parents were relentlessly trying to marry her off, but by Kerch standards she was no beauty, and her father was only middling wealthy, not enough to entice a bridegroom. After each dinner party or ball she could not keep herself from reliving the embarrassments of the evening over and over. Nina, she said, had saved her life – or at least let her get a decent night’s sleep. 

Nina would sleep as well, though West Stave was only just beginning to come alive for the night. Fortunately the House of the White Rose was as solid as it looked, and Oncle Felix did not stint on the heavy brocade hangings that helped to muffle the enthusiastic sounds coming from more typical pleasure house activities in other bedrooms. She supposed that eventually she’d be busier, as word of the work she did spread through Ketterdam, but for now she was enjoying eating three meals a day, and not having to look over her shoulder for slavers.

She was starting to take off the red garment that passed for a _kefta_ – it had only been three weeks, and she was already beginning to hate the way it itched and hung wrongly on her body – when a gentle knock sounded at her door. Sighing, she pulled it around herself again. Another client would mean more money, at least.

But it wasn’t another client. It was Inej Ghafa. Nina opened the door and let her in.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” she said. “Are the Dregs doing an operation? Do I need to get dressed?”

“Nothing like that. Kaz wanted to know how you were doing.”

Nina raised a doubtful eyebrow. She’d only met Kaz Brekker the one time, when Inej had busted her out of the Emerald Palace and brought her to hear his proposal, but he hadn’t seemed the solicitous type.

Inej laughed, a soft trill. “No, you’re right. _I_ wanted to know how you were doing.”

Sighing, Nina dropped to sit on the settee that served as her bed. She hadn’t realized how excited she was about the prospect of doing a job for the Dregs until she was told it wasn’t happening. “All right, I guess. I’m not making money yet, not enough, but Oncle Felix says business will pick up.”

“You don’t need to worry about Per Haskell demanding repayment right away. He bides his time.”

Nina nodded. Inej would know. “I mean, I’m happy doing this work,” she said. “I like helping people. I like using my abilities.”

“That’s good. Have you been outside since you got here? On the street?”

Outside were slavers, Barrel bosses on the prowl, Ravkan government agents who would be very interested in a rogue Corporalnik. “Not yet,” she said.

Inej held out her hand. “Then we should go to the roof.” 

“The roof?”

“Nobody will see you, and you will see everything.”

Nina wrapped a light coat around herself. It wasn’t likely to be cold – it never got that cold in Ketterdam, not like it did in Ravka – but even if nobody was there to see, it seemed a foolish risk to go out in nothing but a _kefta_. She followed Inej into the hallway and to the doorway at the end that led to the staff stairway, then up to the fourth floor, the highest level of the building.

“How do we get to the roof?” she asked as they walked through the hallway.

“Here,” said Inej, and opened a narrow, unmarked door that Nina had taken for a closet. Cool air blew in from an open trapdoor at the top. A rickety ladder was bolted onto the far wall. “I came down this way, that’s why it’s open.”

Nina laughed. Only Inej would enter a building by coming down from the roof, instead of up from street level!

“Go on up,” said Inej.

“You just want to look up my dress,” said Nina. At Inej’s startled look, she shook her head. “Sorry, I make jokes when I’m nervous. That ladder looks like it’s held together with baling wire and prayers.”

“It’s stronger than it looks. And I’ll catch you if you fall.”

“I’ll crush you if I fall!” said Nina, but she took a deep breath and climbed the ladder, hand over careful hand. At the top she stepped out onto the flat roof, which was surrounded by a low stone wall on all sides of the building.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you? We can sit on the edge. They won’t see us – it’s too dark up here. We’ll be shadows.”

Cautiously Nina went to the wall at the front of the White Rose. Below her, the gaslamps of Nachtstraat illuminated the passers-by in flickering images as they moved down the street: four soldiers passing around a bottle, a busker playing a fiddle, a fat merch with two bodyguards discreetly trailing behind him, a group of men and women in the colorful masks of the Komedie Brute. She placed her hands on the top of the wall, considered it, then shook her head. “I can see from here.”

“All right,” said Inej easily, and slung a leg over the wall to straddle it. It was funny, thought Nina, that a position that would make most people nervous seemed to actually relax Inej. Her heart rate slowed, her breathing grew more gentle. “What do you think?”

“It’s wonderful. Better than my little window.”

“And we can hear the music.”

“I wish we could see the sky,” said Nina, looking up. There were always clouds above Kerch, something to do with being an island. At the moment it was completely overcast, a gray layer brightened by the lamps of the city. 

Inej nodded. “I miss the sky. When we traveled, we liked to park our wagon far from the city lights, so we could see the stars. My papa taught me all the constellations.” She fell silent, but Nina could hear her breathing quicken and her heart beat faster. Clearly it was a memory of mixed happiness and sadness, something that gave her pain to recall because it was gone forever. 

Hesitantly, she said, “If it hurts to think about, maybe I could do something? There are ways to change your response –”

“I don’t want to change my response,” said Inej flatly.

“But it upsets you, I can see that. I can help.”

With one smooth motion Inej was standing on the narrow parapet; Nina was sure her own heart rate jumped at that. “Saints! I don’t want to forget. I don’t need to be – to be _fixed._ ” The word twisted in her mouth with contempt.

“No, it’s not like –”

“I’ll tell Brekker you’re settling in,” she said, and then she was off, stepping lightly along the wall as though she were on the cobbles of Nachtstraat and not four stories above. When she reached the center of the roof above the back alley, she bent to grasp the edge and swung below, out of sight. First one hand disappeared, then the other.

Nina took a deep breath. Then she ran – across the roof, not the parapet – to the point where Inej had vanished, and looked over the edge. Inej was gone.

* * *

The Crow Club was full, which shouldn’t have surprised her; after all, the White Rose had customers at every hour, even the ones closer to dawn than to midnight, so why shouldn’t a gambling hall? She thanked Tomas, the White Rose doorman who had brought her Kaz Brekker’s note and then had insisted on coming with her so that she wouldn’t have to walk through the Barrel on her own, then looked around for Inej. As she did so, one of the young men watching the gaming tables detached himself from the wall he was leaning against and sloped over toward her.

“You’re the Grisha? Nina?”

She eyed him warily. His face was bland and open, his dust-colored hair falling into his eyes, and an old scar crossed his chin. “Maybe?”

He laughed. “Yeah, that’s you. I’m Dirix. Come over to the bar with me and I’ll give you your instructions.”

When he’d told her what she was to do, she nodded. Easy enough to monitor the mark he pointed out at the table nearest the bar, and subtly push his heart rate and breathing, keep him excited, nervous. Encourage him to bid up his hand, throw in his money; make him thrill each time he raked in his winnings. When he yawned, or glanced at his watch, she pushed away his sleepiness and tickled his nerves, making his body release the chemicals that would alter his emotions. Keep him at the table, that was her job. Nothing the greenest Heartrender couldn’t manage, but it made pride swell in her, that she was finally doing something for the Dregs, for Kaz Brekker who had set her up in Ketterdam.

And she managed it, too, until a boy rushed in, heedless of the bouncers’ hands on his elbows, forcing his way up to the man at the table and whispering urgently into his ear. His heart pounded without her encouragement, and he threw down his hand and called for his coat.

“Something’s gone wrong,” said Dirix. “Thanks, anyway.”

Great, she thought dismally. Her first job for the Dregs, and it went sideways, even if it wasn’t her fault. Would Brekker kick her out? She put a hand on his arm as he started toward the door. “Can I come? Can I help?”

He shrugged. “Might as well.”

She followed him outside, along with two others she didn’t know, young men she assumed were members of the Dregs. They slipped through alleyways and crooked passages, quickly enough that she had to take off her shoes so she could keep up with them, outpacing the mark and his boy whose carriage was confined to the wider streets. Finally Dirix held his arm out to stop them in the shadows in front of a tall mercher mansion.

Two men were on the porch, revolvers drawn. Drawn on Inej.

Nina gasped. Inej was crouched in a defensive posture, a knife in one hand, but it was two against one, and they had her backed against a wall with nowhere to run. The men were big, coarse-looking. They towered over the small Suli girl. As Nina watched, one of the men sneered, “Come on, sweets. Put down the knife and let us see what you’ve got under those ugly clothes.”

One of the Dregs boys next to her pulled a revolver from his coat. Urgently Dirix whispered to her, “Can you do something?”

She could do something. She closed her powers like a vise, first around one heart, then the other; not stopping them, no, but choking them, slowing them, putting the men to sleep. They dropped like stones.

Inej’s heart was a hammer in Nina’s mind, frantic, spiraling toward panic. She looked toward Inej, and Inej turned her head, somehow finding her eyes, there in the darkness beneath the spreading branches of a tree. Then her glance shifted to the men next to Nina, and she nodded. “It’s all right,” Inej gasped. “I got it. I’ll take it back to the Slat.”

“What’s she talking about?” asked Nina.

“I’ll tell you on the way back to the White Rose,” Dirix said. He steered her away from the others. She looked back, but Inej had already melted into the shadows, and the other Dregs were heading back toward the Crow Club. She could hear shouts in the distance. The sun was beginning to brighten the eastern sky, though it was still some time before dawn.

“This is where the guy lives, the one you were working,” Dirix explained as they walked back towards West Stave. Nina nodded; she’d figured that out already. “The Wraith broke in to steal some papers.”

“What for?”

“Something Brekker wanted. Maybe blackmail. I don’t know.”

“All right,” said Nina. Inej had scaled the Emerald Palace to free her, and had come to her room via the roof. The Dregs called her the Wraith. Not surprising.

“It was good you were there,” said Dirix. “Jesper could have shot one, maybe both of them, but the noise would have alerted the _stadwatch_. It’s better this way. Brekker will be pleased.”

“I guess that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah,” said Dirix.

* * *

When Nina woke, she was startled to see Inej there, in her room, in the clients’ chair. She reached for her bathrobe. “What time is it? How long have you been here? Is there a problem?”

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to wake you.”

Nina frowned. Inej looked – _brittle_ , somehow, like she was holding herself together through sheer force of will. She was still in the clothes she’d been wearing last night, loose black tunic and trousers, a black scarf around her head. Her feet were bare. Her heartbeat was quicker than it should have been. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I – no. Not really. Those men.” She shuddered. “For a moment I was back in the Menagerie, in my mind.” 

“I’ll go wash up. I’ll be right back.”

She splashed water on her face and body as hurriedly as she could. Not counting the operation the night before, she hadn’t seen Inej for weeks, not since she’d inadvertently offended her on the roof. Nina had felt bad about it, but there was nothing she could do. She had been instructed to stay in the White Rose until she was sent for. She’d gone to the roof on her own a few times, nervously scaling the ladder and always staying back from the edge, but though she had the wistful thought she might see Inej there, the roof was always forlorn and empty.

Inej was still in her room when she got back, and amazingly enough, there was a box of pastries on the coffee table. “I brought you some breakfast.”

“I’ll ring for coffee, then. Do you want a cup?”

Inej shook her head. “I want to sleep.”

Nina hesitated. She didn’t want to put her foot in it again. Carefully she asked, “Do you want to sleep here?”

“Do you have clients coming?”

She checked the time. It was nearly midday. “Not for four hours yet. I’m not popular enough, I guess.”

Inej smiled at her, and even in that tired face it was dazzling. “Well, you’ve got one client, now.”

“I normally don’t let my clients sleep in my bed. But for you, I’ll make an exception.”

Inej uncurled herself from the chair and went over to the settee. “Mmm, still warm,” she said as she slid under the blanket. The settee was narrow, and Nina didn’t fit unless she curved her back and bent her knees, though that was how she slept anyway, so it wasn’t a problem for her. But Inej was small and slender, and she didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable as she settled her head on the thin pillow and closed her eyes.

Her heartbeat was still too fast, though. After a moment, Nina pulled the chair closer to the bed. “Will you allow me to help?”

“I’m your client.”

Nina took a breath. “All right.” She reached for Inej’s hand. It was small and strong and looked brown against Nina’s white palm.

“Do you always hold your clients’ hands?”

“No.” She laced her fingers through Inej’s. “Breathe deeply. Nice and slow.”

Inej breathed. Nina felt her pulse, in her fingers and through her power. Gently she nudged her heart rate down, calmed her jittery nerves. “That’s good.” She kept her voice low, her hand soft, felt Inej’s body responding, relaxing, beginning to fall into sleep – 

– and then her stomach gave a very loud gurgle, and Inej opened her eyes and laughed. “Maybe you should eat something first.”

Nina glanced at the tray of pastries. “I’ll have time to eat when you’re asleep. I shall tell my stomach to be quiet for you.”

“Does that work?”

“If I can tell your mind to stop worrying and go to sleep, I can certainly tell my stomach to shut up.”

Inej laughed again. Nina squeezed her hand, then on impulse bent over and kissed her, very lightly, on the forehead. “Now, stop worrying, and go to sleep.”

“Do you always kiss your clients’ foreheads?”

“Of course not. Sometimes I kiss them on the lips.” She laughed – of course, it was a joke –but Inej nodded.

“Then kiss me on the lips, and put me to sleep.”

She did. Only a light kiss, again, but Inej made a soft, breathy noise and Nina’s heart gave a little involuntary jump in her chest. Inej settled back against the pillow and smiled. “Better,” she said. “Now I have nicer things to dream about.”

“Sweet dreams,” murmured Nina, and she eased Inej into sleep.


End file.
